Magical Detective Ayase Yue
by GrandHaberdasher
Summary: Armed with magic, wits, and a hard-boiled monologue, Yue solves crimes and gets in fights on the Mahora campus and beyond. Based on chapter 354.
1. In Which There is Hardboiled Exposition

**In Which There is Hard-Boiled Exposition**

The sky was the color of a digital television tuned to a dead channel, and the sun plodded across the sky with the joyless determination of someone beginning to realize that slow and steady won very few races in the real world. My office smelled of a mixture of ozone, desperation, and my orange-and-curry-flavored drinks. To a stranger, that might sound like an awful reek, but to me it was homey, like the nicotine odor of a hobbit-hole. Nevertheless, I was about to exit the fragrant premises at the behest of someone willing to pay good money for my discerning intellect and atrophied sense of self-preservation. My name's Ayase Yue. I'm a private eye.

Experience is a strict teacher, fond of throwing chalk. It had long since taught me that when life doesn't deviate from your plans, it means you're walking into an ambush or dancing on puppet strings. That said, I can usually get through "Step 1: Egress place of business" before the monkeys bring their wrenches. The fact that the wrench came in the form of a dame was rather less surprising.

"Hello? Detective? I'd like your help with something."

She had long, toned legs fit for an athlete or a dancer, displayed to perfection by her long boots and short skirt. She had big black eyes, pits you'd get lost in without a trace if you leaned in too close. She had hair the same color, an uncommon sight in Mahora, topped by even rarer cat ears. I knew her. Even with the little time I'd seen her, long years ago, I could recognize her. I may never have seen those lovely long limbs covered with that lovely black hair, or those caliginous eyes turn to gold, but our acquaintance had been...memorable enough.

"You're...Koyomi, right? Or you called yourself that when you worked with Fate." I noticed her tensing when I said his name, going from the same kind of nervous most folks have when they first walk into my office to bowstring tight for a moment. Either she hated him and hated to hear his name or she loved him still and hated me saying it. "I only have a few minutes before I need to get going, but if you let me know what you need my help with I can at least tell you if it's the sort of thing that I do."

"Me and a few others from Cosmo Entelechia are working on recreating the _Libri Sibyllini_. We came here because we heard your library has a fragment of it. As long as we were here, we thought we'd do a little sightseeing. It's a beautiful campus. As we were crossing a certain rooftop, we all started feeling sick and weak at once. The feeling went away after we'd walked a bit, and after we spent a little time checking things we figured out that we only felt weird when we were standing in one specific spot. It's marked on this map," she said, unfolding said item and handing it to me.

"Interesting," I said, tone and face and slouch all putting the lie to my word. "I'll check it out sometime after I deal with this case for the school. Oh, who else is with you? In case I need to ask you all for further details, you understand."

"Besides me, there's Bri- er, Shirabe is how you'd know her, Tamaki, Homura, and Cassandra. She's a naiad, and she was one of Master Fate's orphans but never a fighter." _Master_ Fate, huh? Guess it's love after all.

Now, I have not always risen to my full scholastic potential, but none have claimed that I am incapable of basic arithmetic since I was halfway through the first grade. I could tell that something didn't add up. The story itself I neither believed nor doubted just yet, obviously rehearsed though it was. My suspicions were aroused by something else entirely, and I figured my best shot at satisfying them would come from shaking my guest until something fell out.

"So Shiori or Luna or whatever she goes by now couldn't make it, huh? Guess she had better things to do than hang around a bunch of has-beens stuck in weak artificial bodies, huh?"

"Don't you talk about my friend like that." Her fists were clenched and her voice heated. It was a start.

"You know, ''Master'' Fate could probably sort out your little weirdness no problem if hadn't ditched you all years ago. That's rough, the way you got punished and he and Shiori didn't because they stabbed you in the back ten seconds before Negi won."

"Shut up! Master Fate and Shiori fought hard for us! That's the only reason we were allowed to walk free at all!" Her knuckles were white, her decibel levels had made a jump upwards, and she'd gone into that head forward, shoulders up stance some folks think makes them look tough. If she'd had a tail, she'd have been lashing it. Come to Mama.

"No kidding? Guess there's some honor among terrorists after all."

_"WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS! WE WERE FIGHTING TO SAVE THE WORLD WHILE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS WERE WHINING ABOUT SCHOOLWORK, AND I WILL NO-"_

I cut her off with a thunderclap, courtesy of an unincanted spell I'm fond of. It's a mere parlor trick, without the force to rattle the glass on my desk, but it does get people's attention.

"Why did they send you, Koyomi?"

"What?"

"They sent you to ask an old enemy for help. Not Shirabe, the one Fate trusted to perform the ritual with Asuna. Not Tamaki, who never loses her cool. Not this Cassandra chick who never attacked me or my friends. You. What makes Miss Angry Kitty the best spokesman, huh?"

She took a moment to collect herself, chewing her lips and looking everywhere but me. Either she was a terrible liar trying to come up with a decent or a brilliant one trying to appear terrible. I figured the first, since if it was the second I might as well resign myself to bamboozlement. I let her get as far as " " before letting loose the thunderclap again.

"That's a lie and you know it!" I roared. "Now tell me the truth!"

"We know you like beastgirls!" Koyomi blurted.

"What."

It looked like all the blood in her body was having a get-together in her face, and she was toeing the ground like a kid getting lectured about breaking the expensive vase. "We, uh, heard about you and those girls from Ariadne, and we thought you'd be more likely to help us if it was me that asked you."

That was too inane and insulting to be taken as anything other than the absolute truth. I knew about those rumors. Between my close relationships with Colette and Emily and the minor celebrity I'd gained as part of Ala Alba, they were inevitable. I'd just never expected my old enemies to try to weaponize tabloid gossip. If Koyomi was lying right then, I would consider it an honor to be cozened by such a master. For a moment, I could only stare silently and marvel. "Look, I really do have a case I should have already left for, from someone who didn't start out with some clumsy manipulation and never attacked me or my friends." The second part of that is both absolutely true and a bald-faced lie, but I had no interest in getting into that with the catgirl right then. "Why don't you just step out of my office so I can lock up. I'll check out your weird hot spot later tonight, and if you drop by tomorrow, I'll either tell you that I can deal with it or direct you to someone who can. Or let you know that it was all nothing, or that it's a sign the Great Old Ones are going to eat us all, or whatever. Sound fair?"

She nodded and bolted. No wonder. That last revelation must have been about as pleasant to relate as it was to hear. I locked the locks both mundane and magical, and took off towards my patient contact with a fair turn of speed myself.


	2. In Which There is Magical Detecting

**In Which There is Magical Detecting**

I alighted from my staff and sprinted the final stretch to the engineering building, so as to appear properly winded in my apologies. Nijūin Rina, the person who would actually be paying me, would forgive much, but the Robot Engineering Club members loitering about were a different story. I expected theater to be the better part of not having the road in front of my office mined. Granted, the traps would be nonlethal by the club's liberal standards, but having potential customers spending money on hospital bills rather than my fee would be very bad for business.

Rina was the daughter of another mage teacher, and the second-youngest teacher in Mahora history. She had a rather inflated opinion of me dating back to our first meeting, where I was able to identify her as an illusion specialist and explain how I would escape if she tried to trap me in one. For some reason, explaining that I had the advantage of her due to chronal shenanigans tied up with a thwarted plot to reveal magic to the blinkered masses failed to remove the stars from her eyes. Kids these days. So easily impressed.

In the meantime, I was her go-to gal for identifying the culprits in things like Mahora's intermittent inter-club warfare. The students usually stuck to things like shouted insults, thrown produce, and the occasional light brawl. This time, some enterprising soul had turned one of the walls of the Robot Engineering Club room into a brand-new entrance you could drive a decent-sized mech through.

Once my contrition was judged sufficient by those present, I took a quick nip from my hip flask. My specialty concoction provides an all-around enhancement to my sensory abilities and a pleasant strawberry-pepper aftertaste. The increased glare, din, and reek of the world at large that comes with the drink seemed a little less excruciating than I remembered. I idly wondered if I'd been using it enough to build up a resistance before focusing on the actual job I could get paid for. Turning my attention to the scattered debris, I found scrape marks. Some sort of tool or claw then, rather than just a spell or chi technique. The scrape marks yielded something that had never been wall to my probing brush, and a quick test confirmed that the particles were once part of something magical. That meant magical weapons or summoned monsters. That could be a couple of the occult clubs, most of the art clubs, the History Club, or the damn Strolling Club. It could always be the Strolling Club. They knew enough ninjutsu and old-school ninja philosophy that damn near anything could be the Strolling Club trying to shift the blame to someone else, and it was all Kaede's fault for teaching them. Just goes to show that anyone who won't open their eyes will be trouble.

"Got all I can from here," I told Rina and the passel of unsubtle eavesdroppers. "Lemme see what I can get from the room." I got quite a lot from the room, as it happened. Fingerprints, footprints, strands of hair and all manner of other Clues. Unfortunately, it all looked standard human, and if I had the resources to suss out what belonged to who and whether they should be there, I wouldn't need the money from this job. A shame my quarry hadn't been thoughtful enough to leave a signed note implicating themselves. It's hard to get a decent phantom thief these days. "Was there anything taken? It looks like there's still a bunch of widgets and full robots here, and nothing looks vandalized."

A girl who looked to be in the tail end of high school swept up to me from the crowd of loiterers. She wore cat-eye glasses, short green hair, and the expression of a queen condescending to speak to the royal rat-catcher. "I am the Club President," she deigned to inform me. "The thieves didn't take much, really. Just a couple of old powered armor suits and an early iteration of the 'Damn Gun' mech, all from before we started etheric tech. Plus the locators for those items, which is why we have to turn to your parlor tricks instead of finding them ourselves." Prof couldn't have invented etheric tech without standing on the shoulders of a long line of mages studying "parlor tricks," you twit. Magic is magic, whatever you call it. I briefly considered contacting Hakase to have her tell this upstart the same thing with more jargon and much greater length, but as usual my sloth overwhelmed my spite.

"Thanks, Pres. That helps narrow it down." The Occult and Fortune-telling Clubs wouldn't have much interest in the nonmagical machines, and the militant faction of the History Club would have purged more technology. It was probably one of the art clubs purloining them in a fit of esthetic avarice. I turned to face the general mass of roboticists. "There are just a few clubs that could reasonably be behind this, and a handful more that could be unreasonably be behind it. It's too late in the evening to interrogate them tonight-"

"And whose fault is that?" called a malcontent slouching on the edge of the group.

"Her name's Koyomi, she never went here, find her if you want to yell at someone. In the meantime, trust me, I'm a professional, justice will be done and you'll get your stuff back soon. Just don't go haring off after anyone you think probably did it, because that'll just lead to more fighting and Ms. Rina being sad." Nobody wanted that. Rina has a set of puppy dog eyes better than most genuine puppies. "If you have suspicions or any other information that might be relevant, talk to the faculty about it or drop by during my office hours. Any questions?" There were none. As I left, the club members were hashing out who would be on what shifts to protect the unexpectedly remodeled room until it could be repaired.

As for me, I had to figure out what abnormality had Koyomi worried, and how much I could justifiably charge for it.


	3. In Which There are Answers and Questions

**In Which There Are Answers and Questions**

I have always found that when investigating an unknown element, it's best to go in armed for bear. Cyborg, spell-casting bear with a black belt in three different martial arts who hates you. The same applies when going anywhere on the say-so of an old enemy. Or doing anything more hazardous than going to the corner store in a crime-free neighborhood, and even that might be pushing it a bit. There are precious few stories about some sap who took a trip down the river Styx because he packed too much gun.

Besides my trusty moon-tipped staff, I carried a brace of fearsome and eldritch brews that would give me the strength to carry on, but could break the spirit of the unwary imbiber. Mixed in with them were some genuine magic potions, to enhance my normally unintimidating stats. In my pockets were a handful of dragon's tooth soldiers, because only a rank amateur discounts the value of an instant numerical advantage. Topping off the list was a card that would transform into an Ariadne-style broadsword with a shout of "Adeat," because I like to keep all my nostalgia in one place. It ain't exactly Al-Iskandariya, but then the Satellite of Love was decommissioned early on in Negi's negotiations.

The school was deserted by all but the sun, red as a drunkard's nose, when I flew over to take a gander at Koyomi's anomaly. As the rooftop marked on the map came into view, I took a swig from what was normally my hip flask, and returned it to the pocket inside my hat, where my other potables had displaced it. The suspicious summit looked entirely unremarkable from up here. I'd need a closer look.

The unremarkableness stunningly failed to dissipate upon said closer look. Nor did it vanish as I warily circled the designated area like the beginnings of a one-woman dogfight. Although...as I crossed west of the supposed anomaly, a few centimeters of the far end of my shadow seemed to vanish. Now that did pique my interest. As I stepped forward, more of my shadow disappeared, and I realized that this foreshortening was due to what appeared to be a column, about five meters in diameter, made up of scattered points of light. It must have been effectively invisible in the daylight, in the same way turning on a lamp in a bright room doesn't make it brighter. With evening well on its way to night, the contrast was greater, and the column easier discerned. It worried me that my potion-enhanced eyes hadn't registered it earlier. I supposed I really was building up a resistance to my liquid friend.

At any rate, now that I had determined that the anomaly was, in fact, anomalous, it fell upon me to investigate it using the most time-honored method. I poked it with my stick. Nothing happened. Well, Koyomi and company had walked through and apparently come out right as rain. I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

Blind. Deaf. Numb. Whatever you call it when you can't smell anything. My sensory boost went from full power to nothing fast as a bullet hits your gut. I hadn't felt so vulnerable, so weak, so like a mouse in the silent shadow of an owl since we took down the Lifemaker. Spinning to look all around me, I threw a handful of dragon's teeth to the ground as I spoke the melody of battle. The teeth remained inert, the melody impotent as my training shouted down my panic and reminded me to check the skies for danger. I looked up, and saw-

Asuna. In the sky. Looking like she hadn't aged a day since fifteen. At least her head, viewed as through a window. Right in the center of the column. Asuna's head was not supposed to be in the sky. Not this sky, anyway. None of her was. She was off with Negi and Ayaka and Fate doing important things somewhere else that was not the sky. If she was going to be in the sky she would have told me. I'd checked my mail just yesterday, so I couldn't have missed a letter. I'd seen pictures and video with her and Shiori in the same shot, so it couldn't be that again. What in the name of every god and half the devils was ''_Asuna_'' doing in the ''_sky_''?

My frozen bewilderment was interrupted by a rather redundant command of "Don't move!" Naturally, I moved, at least enough to see who was ordering me about. It seemed to be a girl of about fifteen, standing about half a meter inside the column of what I now suspected was Magic Cancel, with a blonde ponytail and a beauty mark under her left eye. That, and the rest of her head, were the only bits that showed above what I figured to be one of the Robot Club's missing powered armor suits (I love it when two cases I'm working turn out to be the same case. It's such fun get paid twice for one spot of detecting.), and the double-barreled guns mounted on both fists were pointed directly at me. "Stay right where you are!" she emphasized, a touch shakily. "I will shoot you if you move."

She probably seen me coming, and waited until I entered the Magic Cancel so she'd have the advantage. Beauty Mark seemed inexperienced, but not fool enough to prioritize some reckless notion of "honor" or a "fair fight" over winning. I approved. Only the overpowered could afford to fight "honorably." In fact, I approved so thoroughly I was willing to offer her a demonstration of quality dishonorable fighting, free of charge. I threw my hat high and to the right. As expected, her eyes and guns followed the distraction as I charged at her, low and towards the left. Beauty Mark turned back to me soon enough to throw down her armored arms to block a left-handed staff thrust to her equally armored groin, leaving her face wide open for a spray of orange-curry juice from my right hand. She shrieked and opened fire at me. I'm not the world's largest target, but it's hard to miss at that range. Two rubber bullets slammed into my stomach and left thigh, two into my right arm and shoulder. I staggered, and she let fly four more right into my center of mass before I could recover. I dropped, and she hit me in the back with another barrage while I lay there, and then one more just to be sure. Pragmatic girl. I'd probably like her if she stopped shooting me.

Beauty Mark removed a gauntlet so that her now unencumbered hand could relieve me of my staff, my drinks, my remaining dragon's teeth, my occult-looking card, and my phone. She stepped over me, and I could hear her collect the teeth I'd tried to use earlier, before taking off somewhere with her spoils.

As I forced my battered body to stand, I couldn't suppress a grin. For one thing, Beauty Mark taking the trouble to frisk me for my magic items told me that they would resume functioning once I was out of this thrice-cursed Magic Cancel field, which laid one niggling worry to rest. For another, Beauty Mark was as ignorant in her own way about the point of combat as the most honor-bound twit. The point of fighting isn't to win. It's to accomplish your objectives. Sometimes, your objectives coincide with victory. Other times, you just need to spray your opponent in the face with something pungent, and keep her from confiscating the sense-boosting potion in your hat. A few bruises weren't going to prevent me from tracking Beauty Mark's orange-curry scent back to her hideout, but they should make our next meeting just a little more satisfying.


	4. In Which There is Pleasant Conversation

**In Which There is a Pleasant Conversation**

Many people, many really quite fortunate and sensible people, don't have much of a vocabulary to deal with pain. They can go through life quite satisfied with describing all their injuries and maladies as "hurting." It is left to those of us who know pain with greater intimacy than a few casual flings to describe her with the proper poetry. There is "ache," the gentlest pain and the one most often welcomed. "Throb," sweeping in and out to ensure she never becomes too familiar to be attended to. "Twinge," small yet vigorous. "Smart," the fiercest one of all. The potion I was using to track Beauty Mark's scent enhanced my ability to feel them as much as my other senses, and all were enthusiastically making themselves known.

Unpleasant and faintly masochistic as it may sound, contemplating this sort of diction and how it applied to my current state kept my mind off of bringing horrific and creative vengeance upon Beauty Mark when I got my hands on her. I had friends among the Mahora faculty who would be certain to become unbearably cross with me if I did so. I was fairly certain there were also some moral issues restricting the amount of harm one was supposed to deal to teenagers who used nonlethal weaponry, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what they were.

Lost in those ruminations, even with my enhanced senses I only noticed Beauty Mark's return when I heard her gasp. I looked up at her, noting with a certain amount of trepidation that she was holding a roll of duct tape and two pairs of handcuffs in her bare right hand, and that the guns on her gauntleted right were aimed directly at me. She looked to be suffering from an equal amount of trepidation and much less experience keeping it bottled up, so I gave her my best calming smile and slowly lifted my open hands in a gesture of peacefulness. If I were Negi Springfield, that might have done it, green as she was. Then again, he might have needed to kiss her before she spilled everything she knew and most of what she guessed. Of course, to Negi Springfield a loss of magic is just a demotion from an anti-army weapon to anti-infantry. I'm not Negi Springfield. My way involves deceit, followed by strong-arming.

"You made excellent time, you know," I told her, sunny as midsummer. "I wasn't expecting you for a good seventy-three seconds. Let's do this properly, this time. My name's Ayase Yue, of Ala Alba."

"Yeah, I know. Uh, I mean, I'm Inoue Nanaho, of the Tea Ceremony Club." Tea Ceremony Club? Armed guards weren't their style. They were more likely to slip you anything from a laxative to a hallucinogen if you crossed them.

"Of course," I replied, trying to look as if her name wasn't any newer to me than mine seemed to be to her. It was good she was familiar with me. My reputation could only be a boon. "Now, I know I looked pretty bad back there. That's the price of relying too much on magic. You see, I use a very special potion to help me on my cases, one you didn't find when you searched me. It's an intelligence-booster, which was obviously off when I tried to attack you. I was absolutely kicking myself when it kicked back in, let me tell you. I mean, then it became so obvious that there's no reason for us to fight! I just need to need to give you a sip, and you'll realize why you should really be on my side. Lemme just get it out of my hat here..." As my used-car salesman patter died down, I began to move my hands slowly to my head.

"Wait! Don't move. I'll get it." Inoue set down the worrying instruments in her right hand and plucked my hat from my head, her armed and armored hand never wavering. After she stepped back to beyond the reach of my fists or feet, she retrieved my supersensory potion and let the barest drop fall onto her tongue. "Disgusting, but not poisoned," she muttered. I will never comprehend how such a multitude of people can have such a warped sense of taste. Strawberry and pepper, disgusting! In any case, she took a swig, and I took my opportunity.

Just like on the rooftop, I charged and Inoue shot me. Unlike before, the shocking-to-her loudness of her firearm's retort visibly pained her with her newly sensitive sense of hearing. Unlike before, I had access to the melody of battle, granting magical aid to my strength, speed, and ability to shrug off the rubber bullets that struck me. I grabbed onto the neck of her armor with both hands and slammed my forehead into hers as hard as I could. The headbutt, performed thus, is one of the more self-defeating moves in a brawler's repertoire, as it pains the user as much as the target. However, my aforementioned longstanding relationship with pain, even mystically magnified, ensured that I came out the better. With Inoue staggered, I had a chance to scrabble for the catch that would release her gauntlet. She recovered as it fell to the ground, so I grabbed her nose with one hand and twisted hard while my other hand searched out the release catches for the rest of her armor.

Inoue screamed in pain, than cried out again at the sound of her own scream. She tried to pry my hand off her nose, so I jabbed my fingernails into her cuticles and twisted harder. She didn't try again. By the time I'd completely divested her of her ill-gotten mail, she was crying tears of frustration and pain. At least, that's what I assume she was crying about. Sure doubted it was happiness. In any case, she seemed pretty well beat, so I switched to good cop mode and offered her my handkerchief before gently asking her who she took her orders from.

"The, the monkey lady."

"Asuna is behind whatever you're doing?" Because Asuna-in-the-sky wasn't surreal enough. I had a sudden premonition that I would end up chasing a white rabbit through a looking glass by the end of this case. And the rabbit would turn out to be Asuna.

"What? No. I think. We never actually saw her face, but she had this whole monkey theme going on. Monkey mask, summoned monkeys, stuff like that. It was a little weird, but she was right there with us about how Japan's losing touch with its own traditions and she had a plan that would let us defeat all the imperialist Western mages in the country so we could reclaim it."

"I think I know who you're talking about." Amagasaki Chigusa. It had to be. My involvement in her last escapade had been limited to running around in utter confusion and calling on the aid of a fellow Baka Ranger, but I'd been filled in enough to know her style. It was either her, a coincidence too great for me to credit, or a copycat with remarkably low standards. "Where's all the gear you took from me?"

"She took it. We're supposed to bring any magic stuff to her. Taking your phone was my idea. Sorry. When I told her about you, she got all excited and said to go fetch you because you'd be useful as leverage. I don't think she was going to hurt you." I tactfully refrained from asking if shooting me with rubber bullets several times at close range counted as hurting or not.

"Thanks. You've been a big help, and I'll be sure to mention that to the principal. Do you have a phone I can borrow?" I saw no particular reason to deviate from the strategy that I'd employed against Chigusa last time, especially since I'd done such a bang-up job at the confusion. Now it was time to call on a Baka Ranger. "I'd like to get Ms. Sasaki's help moving all this Engineering Club crap in off of the street."


	5. In Which There is a Giant Robot

**In Which There is a Giant Robot**

Makie doesn't often become involved in my work, despite working much the same beat. Charitably, this is because her temperament is best suited to areas other than detective work. Less charitably, she was once outsmarted by a bush. Long story. Still, when you're backed into a corner and running on fumes and pigheaded spite, there's nobody better to have by your side. Precious few equals, either.

Once the pink powerhouse dropped by, I'd have enough firepower with me to be able to mount a raid on Chigusa's hideout to get back the stolen tech and my personal kit. The miscreants might be worried about their sentry's absence by the time we hit them, but they should still be waiting for her to turn up rather than bolting for another haven. As Inoue informed me, Chigusa was holed up in a clearing in the woods, which should provide ample cover for a pair as stealthy as Makie and myself. The one item I forgot to factor into my plans was the universe's longstanding grudge against me. As I idly fiddled with the scattered bits of armor, gathering them together into a pile, I noticed the distinctive shape of a Newspaper Club bug. _Damn_. Someone had been listening in, which meant I another call to make once I smashed the cursed thing.

I woke up the principal to let him know that if a giant, hostile robot, possibly able to cancel any magic or ki effects anyone threw at it, showed up, I had the situation well under control. As an afterthought, I added in a request to send a couple people out to the woods. It was possible that Chigusa wasn't the one keeping an electronic ear on her minion. Even if she was, it was possible she and her crew hadn't scarpered yet. It was also possible that it would rain lemon-and-onion juice tomorrow. Makie showed up just as I was hanging up, and I let her know that we'd need to drop by my office to pick up some backup gear I kept for emergencies. Inoue I left with the pile of armor pieces, after I extracted a promise to stay out of trouble. She seemed quite gratified by the trust I was placing in her. I don't think she realized exactly how easily I could track an inexperienced middle schooler, or noticed that I took a few important-looking armor widgets with me as I left.

Makie and I managed to get to my office without incident, and I felt no shame about the fact that she gave me a piggyback ride most of the way. No shame. None whatsoever. After all, she was uninjured and in much better shape than me. It was perfectly reasonable, and the only reason I didn't point that out to the catgirl waiting at my door was that I was sure it would be perfectly obvious to her once she knew I was injured.

"Koyomi, it's late, I've been shot several times and robbed once, and I'm probably going to have to fight a giant magic-proof robot before I can heal up. This had better be good."

"Oh, I was just here to warn you about the giant magic-proof robot that just showed up. Aren't you going to have the principal call the JSDF or something?"

I let Makie handle that one while I went inside to grab my broom and one of the few potions I hadn't brought with me the last time I went to see Asuna in the sky without diamonds. "Oh, we can't do that!" Makie entered full lecturing teacher mode as she continued. "Mahora and the Japanese government have entered into a tacit agreement. The government is willing to ignore things such as middle school teachers younger than their students, military-grade weaponry in the hands of children, and apparent supernatural events. In return, the chaos so common in our school must remain in our school, and be dealt with without inconveniencing or requiring the assistance of outsiders. Outsiders, such as the JSDF."

"So, what, are you going to get together the military clubs or something? I suppose in this school, that's about as good."

"Gasp!" I'm not kidding. Makie actually said the word 'gasp.' "I could never do that! What kind of teacher would force her students to fight in her place?"

"Negi Springfield."

"You've got it backwards. We always demanded the right to fight from him. And Ms. Koyomi? The first time I got involved with Negi's mission, three of the friends who went with me were enslaved. I don't want that to happen to my students."

"The mage teachers' spells and ki attacks aren't going to do a damn thing against what Chigusa has! You need to get help from someone who doesn't use them!"

"I don't use any of that, so it'll be fine."

"You think you're just going to take down seven powered armors and a mech all by yourself?"

"Of course not," I cut in, magic recharged, broom in hand, and smoke bombs in my pockets. "She's got me. Makie, let's go. Koyomi, stay back so your artificial body doesn't get disappeared."

The pilfered Damn Gun mech wasn't exactly hard to spot. Granted, the human-sized powered armors weren't precisely camouflaged, but when the fully assembled mech stood up, it topped the buildings. It was walking away from Asuna's aerial perch, so it must have done whatever it needed to with her. Fortunately, the metal titan and its jetpacked entourage didn't seem inclined to shoot me down as I flew in. I assume they were waiting for me to fall like like a chump as soon as I crossed into the anti-magic field. So sorry to disappoint.

I came in high and fast. I felt it the second I crossed the barrier, as the cushioning spell that made a seatless stick a reasonable mode of high-speed travel cut out. The momentum kept us going, our commendable grip strength kept us both on the broom, and Makie's quick work with her ribbon sent us spinning around the giant's torso to land safely on its back. Sleeping Asuna was ensconced in some sort of glass coffin attached there. Makie made as if to pry her off, but I shook my head. Asuna's magic cancel prevented Chigusa's tricks as surely as mine. Instead, I gestured down to the battery pack located just above the legs. Mahora-built robots tend to have vital components located places it would be very awkward to touch if they were on a human. I've never quite worked up the nerve to ask Hakase about that.

At this point, someone worked off the nerve to fire off a shot. It missed us completely, but more would follow soon, and with that many firing we'd probably take some hits if they were blind-firing. Still, there'd be more if they could see us, so I crushed a smoke bomb and got myself nice and cozy in a nook where Asuna's coffin – make that sleeping chamber for perfectly alive people – would provide me some cover from one side.

Around me, I heard bullets impact the robot like a rubber hailstorm. Below me, I heard the crash of what was almost certainly the mech's battery pack hitting the ground, because Makie's awfully petite. Above me, I heard something like rockets, such as might be caused by a mech's pilot evacuating in an attempt to escape justice. That wouldn't do at all.

"You take care of the kids! I'll get Chigusa!" I cried out as I clambered up the freshly debilitated mech. The Wielder of Five Weapons would be more than a match for half a dozen punks. I launched myself from the robotic head using my broom as a vaulting pole, trying to get as much height, and therefor distance from Asuna's field before I had a sudden stop. It worked, with the broom's flight magic kicking in less than a meter above the ground.

Chigusa was waiting for me there, and so was her water-summoning charm. The water didn't come high enough to do more than get my toes wet, so it struck me as singularly pointless until something grabbed my feet and something else slammed into the back of my head. I turned somewhat woozily and saw one of my own dragon tooth soldiers lifting its shield for another blow. Turn my own weapons against me, would she? I knew them better than her. I knew that the bones were easily separated, even if they snapped back into place just as easily. That meant that I could pop the hands on my feet off their arms long enough to send lightning through my broom into the water, dropping all of the soldiers she'd concealed there.

Apparently Chigusa didn't like that trick, as her next move was to summon a small avalanche of boulders down, to serve as platforms for her monkey-armored self and some assorted summons, including a vast frog, an even bigger spider, and of course a whole cartload of monkeys. All of which I could _fly right over_, so I'm not entirely sure why she bothered. She summoned a tree directly in front of me as I landed behind her, which served as a momentary distraction, but I'd had enough incantation time to unleash Windstorm of Lightning through the branches and send her tumbling over-

The monkey's mouth was open. That momentary distraction had given her enough time to slip out of her armor and use it as a decoy. Confident in my victory, I'd let down my guard and was vulnerable to the attack that she had almost certainly already unleashed. Of course, at the time I didn't consciously think any of that. I just knew that I had to be somewhere else with all haste.

I launched myself backwards on the broom just as an enormous cat statue crashed into the space I'd just vacated. I heard mocking laughter from above, and looked up to see Chigusa held aloft by a great swallow, a fan of charms in her hands.

"_I_ can fly and cast at the same time, Western mage," she cooed. Was that my magic card hanging from her belt?

"Adeat!" It was my magic card! Well, now it was my heavy, distracting sword hanging from her belt, but you know what I mean. Knowing an opening when I saw one, I dropped to the ground, heedless of the water soaking my legs, and let loose a barrage of lightning arrows. Since Chigusa was just another squishy mage outside of her armor, that was all it took. The summons would mindlessly obey their last directives, which meant the only one that could reach me in the air would just flap there, holding its mistress. It had been quite a day. A shame I wouldn't be able to charge the Engineering Club for overnight delivery.


	6. In Which There is Convalescence

**In Which There is Convalescence and Revelation**

Receiving my duly earned lucre took place at the school church the next day, while Cocone was taking a break from healing me. My visits to her were generally a slam-bam-His-love-go-with-you-ma'am sort of affair, but matters like a hoplite shield impacting my skull took more time and effort. Given that ending up like Asuna before her political kick would have badly stymied my major life goals, I appreciated the thoroughness.

First up was Rina, who seemed entirely too awestruck over my supposed heroism, given that it mainly consisted of browbeating a student, ferrying Makie to the action, and tussling with a monkey-suited xenophobe with a kidnapping fetish. Not exactly the deeds of which legends are made, but I didn't want to explain kidnapping fetishes to a bright-eyed ten-year-old, so I ended up simply ignoring the stunningly unwarranted hero worship. I made a token effort to offer Makie a cut of my fee for acting as my muscle, which she predictably turned down.

My meeting with the former members of Cosmo Entelechia proved rather more interesting. The whole gang showed up, including a buxom, green-skinned stranger who was introduced to me as Cassandra. They could all fit around the hospital-style bed with the privacy curtains up, but it was a near thing. She started up what promised to be a simply fascinating line of book talk about the ''_Libri Sibyllini_'', but Shirabe cut us off before the conversation could build up a decent head of steam. Clearly, Ms. Violin still played for Team Evil.

"Here's your fee, Ms. Ayase," she told me, setting the money on my bedside table. "It was a pleasure doing business with you, and quite an improvement from when we were on opposite sides."

"Pleasure was all mine," I lied. Concussions are one of my three least favorite kinds of injury. "Don't think I've earned it quite yet, since I haven't had a chance to give you the rundown on what exactly the thing you hired me to investigate was."

"We've heard, thank you. Amagasaki Chigusa performing some sort of anti-magic ritual that was interfering with our artificial bodies."

"Yeah, but a quick phone call got me a few more details. Seems Chao did some shenanigans which resulted in us having two Asunas around, one to do her political thing and a sleeping one to keep the magic world running. First I'd heard of it. Seems only Asuna's closest friends and some magic world bigwigs knew anything about it. Wonder how someone like Chigusa found out."

If I was ever more desperate for money than usual, I figured I could challenge Koyomi to a poker game, and maybe tell her to bring her friends. Only stone-faced Tamaki and canny Shirabe had managed to avoid looking worried over that last, ever-so-casual remark.

"Perhaps she'll be willing to tell the authorities, now that she's incarcerated," suggested Shirabe, cool and unconcerned as an ocean breeze. "Of course, it's equally possible that she's got some outrageous lie thought up to protect her sources. I'm afraid some mysteries even you might be unable to solve."

"I guess. Oh, one more thing. I'd like to congratulate Koyomi." There was a general expression of confusion. "Before I went after Chigusa, she mentioned that there were seven powered armors with her. Turns out that's the exact right number. I didn't realize that until a few minutes earlier when Rina told me how many were missing. I mean, I could tell there was half a dozen or so, but it's damn hard to get a precise count, the way they were swarming around."

"She always did have a good eye for that sort of thing."

"Oh yeah, very perceptive. Managed to spot that Chigusa would be immune to magic and ki, even before anyone showed up to, you know, try to use spells and ki attacks."

"I spotted Princess Asuna in her coffin thing, and I know how Magic Cancel works," Koyomi piped up.

"Sure, that makes sense. Hey, something just occurred to me. Fate qualified as a Magic World bigwig by the time they did whatever sealing thing on the Asuna that Chigusa kidnapped. Maybe he knew about it. Maybe he passed that information on to his trusted foundlings, who passed it on to Chigusa. Maybe said trusted foundlings keep trying to pass mediocre-at-best lies past a detective who's rather short on patience and sics the authorities on them. Maybe they walk and maybe they don't, but I know for damn sure that they will be grievously inconvenienced in the process.

"See, the only reason we aren't right now surrounded by grim-faced types ready to take you in for questioning is that you went to the trouble to bring me in. There was no reason for you to do that if all you wanted was for Monkey Girl to succeed. What gives?" There was a pregnant pause. After a few moments, it gave birth to a series of baby explanations.

"All we ever wanted was to help people. To make it so that nobody had to end up as low as we did." That was Tamaki, showing emotion for the first time.

"Even if we didn't fight alongside Lord Fate, we wanted to help save the world. Some of us wanted to become healers, or to grow food so that nobody went hungry again. I became a scholar because I knew that we needed knowledge to fight against barbarism." Cassandra, if you couldn't guess.

"But once the war was over, everyone, people we'd bled to save, started treating us like monsters and criminals!" Homura, slamming her fist down for emphasis.

"Ms. Amagasaki had derived a certain notoriety among various parties due to her encounter with the infant version of Ala Alba. She had to be dealt with before she bacame a true threat, but nobody able to spare the time to solve a problem that wasn't yet a crisis would be convinced by a pack of unrepentant _terrorists_." Shirabe, gamely trying to maintain her calm facade even as she spit out that final word.

"So we thought we could leak the information about the Princess to her, and then get you to investigate, and then you'd find out about her and then she'd get taken out before she could build up a following of more than a handful of people. But we didn't expect that you couldn't call the [=JSDF=], or that she'd get a bunch of robots, or, well, that we'd be having this talk right now." Koyomi, swiftly going from excited to worried to sheepish.

"Life lesson, ladies," I proclaimed. "If you tell the truth, it's a lot harder for people to catch you in a lie."

"We can't help it!" shot back Koyomi. "You thought I was trying to pull one over on you from the second I stepped into your office!"

"You were trying to pull one over me from the second you stepped into my office. Trying to distract me with a pretty pair of ears, it's downright insulting." I overrode the catgirl's answering splutters to continue, "Nevertheless, I'll make sure to put in a good word for you in whatever ears matter, and if you hear about something else that needs fixing, you can always let me know and I promise to give you a fair shake. Hope you enjoy your stay in Mahora."

We exchanged some pleasantries and they trooped out. Before she followed her friends, Koyomi turned back to me, blushing for some reason. "Yue?"

"Yeah?"

"My name, well, my real name? It's Torako. I-I just thought you should know." And she was gone, like a whiff of perfume fading in the breeze.

"Damn," said Misora, making me go for the gold in the high jump from a seated start. She must have been eavesdropping on the other side of the curtain. "You really are like catnip for beastgirls. If it works on guys, the twins better watch out."

"Shut up. Nuns shouldn't have such impure thoughts."


	7. In Which There is a Journey's Beginning

**In Which There is the Beginning of a Journey**

Jack Rakan was on fire and it wasn't my fault. No, the blame for that minor inconvenience to Ala Rubra's resident gorilla impersonator must go to the young ladies formerly of Cosmo Entelechia. They had insinuated themselves into the tail end of what had become Ala Alba's week-long reunion on a purported mission of goodwill and reconciliation. Their hostile immolation, vengeance for seven-year-old lechery, had failed to undermine that mission, or to excite more interest than the picture of the twins' daughters. The White Wing had developed quite refined palates for mayhem, especially after reaching the legal drinking age, and those dilettantes had lit a fire without bringing a single marshmallow.

Substandard hooliganism aside, the shindig was was going excellently. Enemy chattered gaily with former enemy, veteran warriors as carefree as the children they'd been when they first took up their weapons. Even grim Mana, already a hardened soldier when she could count her years on two hands, had a smile on her face. A profound peace descended upon me.

It was promptly broken when _someone_ slipped an ice cube down my back.

Torako's excessive display of giggling struck me as entirely out of proportion to my perfectly reasonable reaction. "Nice leap, Yue. I guess you aren't an old lady after all. I was wondering, from the way you were sighing," she said as she wiped some dampness off her hands. Dampness that might have come from, say, picking up an ice cube. Hypothetically.

"She's always kinda been like that," said Nodoka from where she sat on my other side. "I think her first words were 'kids these days.'" She chuckled drunkenly to herself.

"It's called maturity," I grumbled. "I have to have a lot of it to make up for all of you tittering children."

"Maturity is important, but it's good to have fun sometimes too, don't you think?" asked someone who'd just arrived at our table. Negi Springfield. His face remained the perfect symbol of Beauty, the only Platonic ideal I'd ever personally witnessed. I could appreciate it better, now that he'd stopped giving me heart palpitations every time he came near. "Especially at a party."

"You know what's fun? Not having ice cubes dropped down my back. It's like going to an amusement park every day."

He laughed, and the world was a more luminous place for a moment. "Well, I know I was just talking about having fun, but I'm afraid I've got a favor to ask you, Yue."

"Finding Anya for you, right?" I savored his look of surprise for a moment before continuing. "This Ala Alba/Ala Rubra reunion has expanded to include the people who kidnapped a member of both groups, yet here it is finally winding down and still there is no Anya. There is also no Fate, but you specifically announced that he'd begged off." And of course there was no Arika, since she was rather busy being a statue until Konoka worked out a cure. "Then you come over here to ask a favor of the person whose job description includes, among other things, finding missing people. I've been studying rocket science, and this isn't it."

"All that makes me even more certain you're the right person for the job. Would you be willing to do it?"

"If you can get me to London and back, sure. Air fare's a lot of my money."

"I'll pay for your plane tickets and your normal rates, of course. I couldn't ask you to do this for free."

"Than this is business, not a favor. But thanks."

"London?" interjected Torako, who looked like she'd been holding it in since I mentioned the name. "Can I come? I've always wanted to see London. Big Ben, Bakers Street, Abbey Road, over two hundred and forty museums!"

I felt my eyebrow lift. "You've always wanted to see a city in the Old World? I didn't think people back in the Magic World had even heard of Europe, much less London."

"Fine. I've always wanted to see it since I found out it existed. It has Sherlock Holmes and _over two hundred and forty museums_, Yue."

"I like you. Even if you helped the guy who killed my friends for a bit, you're cool. We should get drinks some time," said Nodoka.

"I'd be happy to pay for another set of tickets," said Negi.

"How about a third?" I asked. "You could come with us, Nodoka. I know you'd enjoy it."

She started, looking oddly guilty. "I can't. Prior engagement. Sorry." She let her hair fall in front of her eyes the way she'd worn it when we were young, like a few strands of keratin would keep the harshest part of the world at bay.

"Very well," said Negi, looking a little concerned but unwilling to pry. "Two tickets it is. I'll have them for you tomorrow. Thank you very much, Yue. If you'll excuse me, it looks like Hakase's waving me over. I better go see what she wants." With that he departed to shine his light elsewhere.

For my part, I was already preoccupied with Nodoka's odd reaction. What prior engagement could possibly make her respond that strongly? Torako looked from one of us to the other for a moment before standing up to go and saying, "Gosh, look at the time. I better go be out of earshot for a while. See you in a bit."

Nodoka squirmed in the heat of my practiced level stare. Her alcohol-eroded will crumbled easily before my ability to keep my eyes pointed at one place. "It's something for Konoka. She asked me not to tell anybody. It's too sensitive for the attention it'll get if someone like Negi or an Ariadne graduate gets involved. She mentioned an Ariadne graduate specifically."

Not exactly planning a surprise party, then. "So what exactly is so sensitive?"

Nodoka took a deep breath and a swig of liquid courage before leaning towards my ear and expelling the secret in a gust of hot breath. "The petrified Arika is a fake. The real one's been kidnapped somehow."

* * *

The plane trip to London gave me plenty of time to brood as Torako napped. Arika's absence had been the elephant in the room at the reunion, although some of my less cautious comrades might have partaken in enough of the hard stuff to see another kind of elephant. For all they loved him and had passed on some remarkably auspicious genes, Negi had the luck of a thousand broken mirrors when it came to parents. Some were simply orphans, and able to grieve and move on. My dear teacher, on the other hand, had lived most of his life with the ones who gave him life almost close enough for his reaching fingers to grasp. His long-sought father, once discovered, was the thrall and puppet of a mage so old and powerful to be more akin to a senile force of nature, and his mother was the victim of the same just-maybe-curable-some-day mineral affliction that ravaged his village. Even with his sire restored to freedom, and more recently, health, it was a miracle Negi remained functional and apparently happy. Nobody wanted to find out if the miracle stood up to the pressure of reminders about Arika's condition, let alone news that mother dear had been absconded with.

At least the unknown malefactor or malefactors had left us a lead while trying to cover their tracks. Geology and earth magic were never among my stronger suits, but I'd researched enough to know that petrified folk turn into a specific kind of rock, and it ain't exactly common gravel. Globetrotting Nodoka could travel to areas where Arika-sized chunks of the stuff had been removed recently and snoop around without raising the suspicions of any but the most paranoid.

Granted, "the most paranoid" was an apt description of the sort of people who could kidnap beloved, statuesque Ostian royalty and replace her with a decoy that fooled all and sundry who didn't examine it with Konoka's healing arts. Not much to be done about that.

The potential from Bookshop's mission finally exhausted, I turned my brood to the job I was actually supposed to be doing. There wasn't much to go over. Once Anya had discarded her bizarre mammary-based morality, we'd both determined we had little in common and had had little correspondence since. Her lack of communication could be due to being distracted by hedonistic excess that would impress a Roman emperor, monastic vows of silence and hermitage, or just forgetting to charge her phone and check her mail. I simply didn't know enough about who she was and who she'd become to say which was more likely.

Fortunately, the plane landed before I could get bored and make any truly extravagant hypotheses. "Wake up, Torako. If you don't stop drooling all over my nice shirt I'll send you back to Japan in the luggage."

"Ung. Mmf. You wouldn't be that mean. Not after I did that whole excited thing about getting to see the city," she said muzzily as she returned from dreamland.

"I'd send some postcards back with you. It'd be just like you were there."

Torako wisely chose not to test her hypothesis about the limits of my cruelty, and we disembarked without incident. Explosions failed to appear, enemies refrained from ambushing, and cryptic warnings unaccountably declined to be uttered by suspicious strangers. Either this excursion was going to be as uneventful as picking up milk from a store a continent away, or the other shoe was going to drop at terminal velocity.

Anya's apartment was located a brisk walk from the airport, making it easy for her to set up where spendthrift tourists would see her. Applying percussion to her door and accompanying it with entreaties to reveal herself produced no Anya, but did produce her rather agitated landlady, trying to be subtle about the steak knife she was holding. She calmed down considerably upon identifying us as well-groomed, polite young ladies who fit the picture of the concerned friends we claimed to be better than vicious hooligans or the kind of debt collectors who wield baseball bats and significant pauses. It transpired that about three weeks ago, Anya had paid her rent for the next six months and entered a state of most uncharacteristic hermitage. Her friends and neighbors were getting very worried, especially given the fact that she had made no evident attempt to stock up on food for her seclusion. The arrival of Torako and myself became the catalyst to unlock her door for a mass check on her. As a practicing detective, I claimed and received the right to the front of the crowd in case there was something unexpected and dire.

The moment when the door swung open demanded a sinister creak. Alas, the hinges were criminally well-maintained, and the only sound that accompanied their movement was some affronted bird caterwauling. The world simply has no sense of drama. The room beyond the drearily silent door had the lights off and the curtain drawn, so it took those without night vision heightened by magic potion or feline genetics a moment to adjust. I, however, immediately took in the dust of roughly five weeks' stillness, the disorder that fell well within the parameters of "no struggle, just messiness," and, of course, the life-size stone Anya in the middle of the room.

That extra moment of clarity gave me the time I needed to think up a cover story for the mundanes. It started with me giving out a great "Ha!" that made the general populace jump. "Oh man, you gotta be kidding me," I continued, striding to the statue and breaking off a piece of the hair. "This thing's solid stone, look! I thought some of my old classmates were the masters at playing silly buggers, but not even they smuggled in a solid stone statue! That's some serious dedication. Did one of you put her up to it?" There was a general no-ness from the throng. "Ah well, wherever she is, it must be exactly where she wants to be. A solid stone statue, I can't believe it. She'll no doubt pop up as soon as she decides the joke's over."

After checking bedroom and bath, the gathering dispersed with general good cheer. After all, Anya may have been impulsive and a mite odd, but she'd been taking care of herself just fine for getting close to a decade now. No reason to assume the worst. As soon as we were out of earshot, Torako spoke up. "You're going to need an explanation to those poor people about why the joke never ends."

"Not planning on that."

She raised one onyx eyebrow. "Konoka's that close, huh? Then you'll need an explanation for Anya about why you messed up her hair."

"Not planning on that, either." I passed her the chunk of stone hair. She gave it a moment of puzzled examination before gasping in shock and nearly dropping it. Torako knew as well as I did: petrified creatures are more detailed than the finest works of art. With the right equipment, you can see the individual lithic cells. On the side of the hair piece that had been connected to the rest, we should have been able to see the broken-off ends of individual hairs. Instead, the rock looked like any other bit of vandalized statue. Our Anya, like our Arika, was a fake.


	8. In Which There is a Name of Significance

**In Which There is a Name of Significance**

I had never given any thought to how one would go about counterfeiting a petrified body. This was clearly an oversight on my part. A detective who cannot recognize and counter the most audacious schemes a criminal can conceive of is no more than a buffoon for a phantom thief to toy with. I did remember that the petrified were always transformed into the same variety of rock, of which we had a sample shaped like a lock of hair. Torako and I pooled our geological knowledge and came to the ironclad conclusion that the variety in question was most definitely grey.

Geology never struck me as a particularly interesting or relevant subject.

I missed my artifact deeply at that moment.

Nodoka was doubtlessly working with more specific information. Nevertheless, it seemed prudent to gather whatever leads we could at what was probably the scene of one or more crimes. To do that, I would need a pretense to tell Anya's mundane friends (the ones who hadn't wandered off, at least) about why I was gathering data to help track down their favorite fortune-teller. Fortunately, I had a cunning solution.

"Can any of you tell us anything that could help track down your favorite fortune-teller? If she hasn't popped up yet, I guess she must have gone off on vacation somewhere and just left the statue behind for some reason. I tell you, I'm going to give her such a piece of my mind when I find her. There wasn't even a note!"

My solution netted me a great torrent of facts and suppositions, which boiled down to a whole lot of nothing useful. Anya traveled little, even within the city. She mentioned her hometown in Wales occasionally, usually to compare it unfavorably to busy, sheep-free London. She spoke passionately and rather frequently about the far-off town of Mahora, the one place we could be most certain she was not. Torako and I heard manifold repetitions on that theme until we finally came to Anya's landlady, the final local to be questioned.

"This is cruel of you," she said.

"Beg pardon?" I replied.

"I'm not blind, and I'm not stupid. I may not know much about magic, but when someone involved with that sort of thing vanishes and there's a life-size statue of them in their room, I don't think they went on any _vacation_. And I figure if you could do anything about someone being turned to stone, you'd do it instead of wasting your time asking where she might have gone."

"I expect anyone in the know would come to about the same conclusion, and you'd all be wrong together. The statue is simply carved stone, and Anya is at large somewhere."

"You mean someone actually went to the trouble of... Are you kidding me? Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?"

"Yes ma'am. My grandfather told me about it. Years later, I found out that one of my classmates, who I thought was just a scientific genius, was a time-traveling Martian warrior-mage from another dimension. The insights that floored the quantum mechanics geeks at the university probably came from her textbooks. Still a genius, though, because she would have read those books as a preteen at the latest. Oh, and she might be Martian royalty. She's certainly descended from it, but I'm not sure if she's close enough to count.

"Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that sometimes the hoofbeats are horses, but sometimes they're zebra-striped unicorns, and more than once I've seen them turn out to be dogs with coconut shells on their feet."

The landlady, whose name I realized I still hadn't gotten, executed a facepalm that Chisame would have approved of. "And I thought the world got weird when I found out there was real magic in it. Does-does Anya know about all these things?"

I was about to reply that she did, and about the robots and ninjas and whatever Sakurako was, too, but Torako beat me to the punch. "Because of, er, circumstances, I never got to know Ms. Cocolova very well, but I saw her courage and resilience in dire straits when she was just ten years old. And I've seen her allies defy gods, steal souls back from death, and walk away from paradise to continue the fight. Wherever she is, whatever state she's in, whoever's behind this, we'll bring her back safe and sound. I swear it."

Well. That seemed more reassuring than the response I was going to give. Admittedly, squawking like a chicken might be more reassuring than my plan of listing more things that could threaten Anya. Anyway, the important thing was that the landlady was actually smiling now.

"Well then. I suppose I had better tell you after all," she said. Wonder of wonders, would canvassing the neighborhood actually turn out to be useful? "Anya's fortune-telling didn't involve astrology, did it?"

I shrugged. "I never studied the field myself, but I don't believe so."

"You see, a few weeks ago, not long before she locked herself in her room, I overheard her muttering to herself about Aries. I asked her if she'd taken up stargazing, and she jumped about a foot and said she had no idea what I was talking about. I didn't press her because I figured it couldn't be that important, but now... I know it probably won't be any use, but any bit helps, right?"

* * *

"Cryptic words and phrases are a great detective's meat and drink. I'm sure we'll end up using it to crack the case."

A pair of quick phone calls told me firstly that I could merge my investigations with Nodoka's on a certain Grecian island, and that Negi would be perfectly willing to foot the bill for more plane tickets. At least it was a quicker trip this time. Torako came with me, on the grounds that it would be boring to go touristing about without anyone she knew.

Given the fact that Nodoka and I had had a weeklong, heartfelt reunion just a day or two ago, we elected to go straight to business once we were all settled in the hotel. Once Torako and I got Nodoka up to speed, she returned the favor.

"Like you've already realized, you need a very specific type of rock if you want to fake a petrified person and not have everyone from the magical world thinking something looks off about it. I'll be happy to get into the absolutely fascinating science behind it, but for now let me just assure that the only place you can get large enough unbroken pieces to carve life size statues out of is right on this island." Nodoka's businesslike look turned into a slight smile. "As a side note, it's a bit disappointing, but it turns out the rock's sedimentary, not metamorphic."

Given how long ago and desultorily I studied geology, it took me a beat before I chuckled. Torako just continued cocking her head and looking adorably confused. "...Okay," she said, "I'm going to assume this would be funny if I knew what those words meant."

Nodoka looked flustered as she tried to explain. "Uh, you see, there are three types of rock, and metamorphic is one of them, and that's rock that's been changed by heat and pressure, and petrification obviously changes people, so, uh, pun..."

Torako let her head drop. "Both of you really need to get out more."

"We've both travelled across two worlds. Heck, Nodoka's _job_ is to go exploring places."

"I ain't saying it'll be easy."

Nodoka coughed lightly. "Anyway. Let's get back to business. The only people taking out large enough blocks of rock are working for one of three corporations: Aegis Kai Doru, the Cheiron Group, or," she paused with a big grin, "a certain Zodiac Inc. I haven't had the chance to investigate any of them much, but if Anya's been going on about western zodiac signs, we know exactly who to go after."

"Excellent," said Torako. "We'll need codenames and, of course, masks if we're going to be breaking into places and fighting people in a country with laws against that sort of thing. You know my group went with artifact-based ones, but calling both of you Book wouldn't really work."

Nodoka and I exchanged a look of surprise. We both knew that the weak artificial bodies the Fatettes had been put in were part of their sentence, the equivalent of confiscating a triggerman's gun collection. "Wait a second," I said. "'We'? When were you planning on telling me you learned to transform that body? Or did you somehow break the restrictions on channeling ki or mana through it? Very impressive, in any case."

"Yue, I didn't do any of that. I don't need to. Do you think your Ku Fei needs to use ki to be useful? Or Tatsumiya needs to use her demon half? I've spent the last seven years training this punishment of a body to its limit, and I got these," and she pulled a pair of long-bladed, glossy black knives from some hidden pocket or sheath on her back, "through three airports without getting caught, so I think I'm better than dead weight. It's not like this is the first time I've done something like this."

Nodoka and I exchanged another look, with somewhat less surprise and rather more regard. She raised an eyebrow; I knew the catgirl better, so the final decision was up to me. "All right. You're in. Still, I've got something I'd like you both to have with you just in case." I dug in my beg for a small bottle of what looked like black marbles with bits of wire coming off of them. "These are some flares I made. They pack quite a punch, so you shouldn't need more than one at a time. If we get separated and you need help, just light the fuse and toss it in the air, and the other two should see or hear it. If something happens to me, I'll be sure to do much the same with a spell."

* * *

"Bring lots of rope, too," piped up Nodoka. "Silk, hemp, wire, whatever you can get. In the library and the ruins, I've run short of rope plenty of times, but I've never had too much. Now, about those codenames..."

In the end, we decided on animal codenames. Torako was obviously Cat, Nodoka received Rabbit for her trademark long-eared backpack, I was dubbed Owl because of a mysterious quote-unquote "vibe" I was deemed to possess. Devising the plan took less time. Given that the warehouse in which Zodiac Inc stored its rock collection was by all appearances completely unguarded, the only plan we could make was "break in, hope the guard isn't some Negi-class threat on punishment detail, then figure things out from there." At least Nodoka's telepathy should let us hear him, her, it, or them coming.

Unfortunately, telepathy is notably ineffective against a simple mechanical trap releasing knockout gas. Fortunately, I had a counterspell prepared for just such an eventuality, along with a few other possibilities. Plans may not survive contact with the enemy, but you can't go wrong with a dozen or two countermeasures for anything that might come up. The few seconds of dormancy before my little trick kicked in was enough time for the guard to appear. He was clearly a ninja, which explained why he hadn't been seen before. I needed to remember to ask Kaede about the conjunction between "master of stealth" and "immediately recognizable uniform" at some point. Someone who actually wanted to blend in would wear navy blue for nighttime, not all that black.

At the moment, our new friend and his not-especially-stealthy outfit were between me and the members of my little party who didn't have something prepared to deal with every status ailment short of Doom. That was going to complicate my efforts to get them back on their feet.

I leapt to my own feet with a roar of "Eat this!" and two blasts of the mystic equivalent of a shot of adrenaline spiked with tiger blood in quick succession. As I'd hoped, my opponent mistook my spells for attacks and dodged them, giving me free shots at my fallen comrades.

What I didn't consider was the possibility that the ninja's dodge would take him over my head where he'd perform some kind of pressure point trick on my neck leaving me paralyzed. Naturally, that's exactly what happened. Since sufficiently nasty paralysis can stop your lungs from pumping, I'd gone to some lengths to ensure that my countermeasure worked damn near immediately. It was still annoying, as fighting ninjas so often is.

Case in point, the way Mr. X went bounding off again before I could get a spell off on him (it was only _damn near_ immediately) and had the nerve to split into a dozen or so duplicates while in the damn air, surrounding me as soon as they touched ground.

"_Eight-o'clock!_" That was Nodoka, speaking very quickly and making me extraordinarily glad I'd taken the time to wake her up. Ninja-boy not being deaf, his real self booked it as I got my shot off. It seemed he'd had enough of jumping up and down, as he went left instead of up where I'd sent a blast of lightning to meet him. Not that he got very far before kissing the ground in a bloody-legged heap, a black-bladed knife that cut him landing alongside. Its twin flew off into the night to what would have been the ninja's right.

"Gotcha!" cried Torako as I wasted no time binding our fallen foe with arrows of wind, and then putting a quick heal on his legs before the poor thing bled to death. "Instant movement's only useful if I don't have an idea of where you're going."

"Ah? Oh, I could only sense thinking from that one, not from any of the others. Now, let me find out what this guy knows." Nodoka placed her hand on that guy's head and closed her eyes in concentration. After a moment she frowned. "That's odd. As far as he knows, the rock's being excavated for the fossils inside it. He keeps thinking of that _Jurassic Park_ movie Ne- the teacher got all giddy over."

"What about Anya?" I asked.

"He doesn't recognize the name." A pause. "Or the face." Another. "Or the voice."

"Could he be using some ninja trick to beat your mind reading?"

"He wasn't good enough to hide the noise of his thinking. That's how I could tell the real him from the clones."

"Maybe a Trojan horse maneuver? Letting himself get captured so he could trick us?"

"Something to consider," said Torako, blandly, as she looked up from gathering her weapons. "Let's go smash all the rocks in the warehouse while we think it over."

"Right, right, that'd be a dumb plan," I replied. "Rabbit, what's he know about 'Aries?'"

"He just started thinking about a war god. He seems confused by the question."

Torako almost dropped her blades. "War god. Oh no. We've had the wrong Ares. It's not Aries the sheep. It's the god those one guys called Mars, and that's what you call the planet where the Magic World is. Oh please let me be wrong."

"Talking about the Magic World just confuses him," said Nodoka. "I really think we've been off on the wrong track. Ares, the war god...'Aegis Kai Doru' means 'Shield and Sword.' Yep, he says Cheiron and Zodiac have been competitors for a long time, but Aegis Kai Doru came out of nowhere just a couple years ago. Man, we screwed up. Er, it seems he'd love to just forget about us, as long as we go and bother some other company."

I started lightly thumping my head against the warehouse walls. "Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea. Sir, I am very sorry for the inconvenience and the knifing. Let me just cancel the binding spell and we'll leave and you'll never have to see us again." Usually I could at least start putting a plan into effect before things go catastrophically wrong.


	9. In Which There is an Emotional Reunion

**In Which There is an Emotional Reunion**

Since we had no better plan and we were in the neighborhood anyway, we decided to go knock on the Aegis Kai Doru warehouse. Nodoka did the honors, for some reason saying "Little pig, little pig, let me in."

Torako and I exchanged confused looks which utterly failed to abate when a familiar voice responded "I guess I better, since I've got no hairs on my chinny-chin-chin."

And then who opened the door but Anya, looking happy as a dragon with a new princess and completely unharmed. That was definitely a Bad Sign. Such easy wins always are. "Hey Nodoka!" she said. "Still with the bunny backpack, I see. And you must be Yue, by the staff. Heh, you, Yue. Who's your friend? And why are you all wearing ski masks?"

"They keep our heads warm. You lose most of your body heat through your head, you know," said Torako as she shed her headgear. Nodoka and I followed suit. "I'm Torako, by the way, although I went by Koyomi when we met last. Sorry about the whole kidnapping thing, by the way."

"Nah, we're cool. As long as the maid dress wasn't your idea."

Torako turned quite an interesting shade of red. "N-no. Gah, I forgot about that. It was Tamaki's idea, I swear."

"Well that's all right then. Come in, everyone. It's more comfortable than you'd expect."

A small part of my brain resolved to tease Torako about the maid dress thing later. Most of it had been furiously occupied since Anya showed with trying to come up with a way for one of us to stay behind in case – oh who was I kidding – _because_ it was a trap. Anya had already seen that all three of us were present, and she was far too calm about Torako for us to leave her outside so as to not frighten her, and...

"Sounds great! Let's go, ladies!" chirped Nodoka, grabbing us each by an arm. _I sent Haruna a text saying where we went while her attention was on Torako. Let's spring this trap._

_You're a genius,_ I replied.

_I'm a dungeoneer. You always always always make sure someone outside knows where you're diving, through whatever means you have. She got another one before we hit the other warehouse._

When Anya claimed that the warehouse would contain more than the expected comforts, I'd assumed that meant there would be more inside in the way of furniture than a ratty blanket on the floor next to a stack of those military meals Mana called MREs. Well, someone might be able to use one of the stone blocks as a chair, but given their size it'd be an awkward clamber. Apparently Anya thought our expectations were remarkably pessimistic. Then again, one of the people she was talking to was _me_.

Nodoka tsked. "You'd think a bigshot organization could spare a little money for some accomodations to keep their guards in top shape."

Anya slammed the door behind herself unnecessarily loudly. "The glory of serving Ares far outweighs some meager luxuries." Glowing protective charms flared into being along the walls and ceiling. From the looks of things, the building could serve as a creditable bomb shelter. Blasting out through the wall was not on the table.

We turned around, and sure enough the redhead had the glassy-eyed stare of a true believer. "It's not about luxuries," said Nodoka. "It's about efficiency. A futon costs a lot less than a guard that gets beaten because they're sore from sleeping on the ground."

Anya sneered. "We little need such meager advantages. How could we, with such blind fools as you as our only opponents? Look how blindly you wandered into my trap!"

"For the love of Kant, woman, get some synonyms," I said. "Here, I'll spot you paltry, pitiful, and scant for meager, and I'm not even a native speaker. Can you think of something better than calling us blind again? Oh yeah, and we knew it was a trap. We're just good at escaping that sort of thing."

I guess she didn't appreciate my advice. Some people are really sensitive about that sort of thing. "Worms! Dogs! Kneel before me and submit to the glory of Ares or your charred and petrified corpses will be delivered to Arika's treacherous bastard for him and the rest of his filthy mudborn whores to weep over!"

Now, Ala Alba is nothing if not contentious, and insults flying between members is nothing to make a fuss over. I heard worse every time Asuna and Ayaka had to spend thirty consecutive seconds in the same room. Heck, Anya herself had let loose some serious vitriol directed at the more buxom members of the class without any repercussions. This frothing cultist before me? She was not the Anya we knew. She was not one of us. She was not allowed to speak that way about my friends, and nor was whoever had brainwashed her. For the moment the fury choked off all my words, but the low, inhuman growl emanating from Nodoka spoke for us both.

The less-affected Torako just snorted and drew her long knives. "Seven years ago, me and half a dozen others took on an entire world and only lost because the boss switched sides on us. You really think I'd surrender to you because, what, you outnumber us one to three?"

Anya signaled her disapproval of the catgirl's attitude with a fireball. Torako dodged around a stone block that the flame dissipated harmlessly against, and the battle was officially joined.

I returned fire with some wind, which Anya dodged annoyingly easily. Air is supposed to be hard to see, for crying out loud, even when it's moving. The exchange continued for a few more volleys, her evading so casually it looked like I just had bad aim, while I had avoided her strikes by dint of actual effort. Such battles of attrition are generally losing propositions for me against mages with rather lower magic reserves than a Meridiana graduate, but it worked great as a distraction to allow Nodoka to sneak around Anya's back with her silent steps and cold-cock the squishy caster, as Eva would say.

Well, except for the part where Anya spun around and set Nodoka aflame just before she struck. Nodoka's reinforcement magic meant that sort of thing wasn't nearly as fatal as one would expect, but I figured it would be best to try and end things quickly just in case. I unleashed a barrage of homing lightning arrows, angled to hit from above so that the fire mage couldn't dodge and let the arrows hit my friend. She could still jump back and drag Nodoka into their path, though. I managed to send the magic missiles jolting back, which actually made Anya jump a little and release her hostage. I'd have considered the whole thing a wash if it weren't for the energy I'd expended.

The expected return shot wasn't directed at me, but off to my left where it sent Torako yelping and dodging back behind her stone shield. That clinched it. Anya was reacting to things she had no business being able to react to.

"'Nodoka! Can you disrupt her telepathy?'" she suddenly yelled, mockingly, taking the words right out of my mouth. "Because of course that's what the _professional fortune-teller_ is using to see attacks coming."

Well sure, when she put it that way. See, telepathy is what I'm most used to seeing used for such things. It's what my best friend specializes in. Of course it was the first thing I'd think of in the heat of battle, and the smug brat could shut right up.

In any case, Nodoka appeared to have come to same conclusion regarding the likely result of continued strife against a precognitive pyromaniac that I had, judging by the way we both bolted for Torako's rock. Naturally, Anya sent great gouts of fire into each of our paths, but with her Cantus Bellax and my flying staff we were both able to avoid any serious harm. Our success at that endeavor had the gears in my brain spinning, but Nodoka proved hers had already finished when she grabbed Torako and me and initiated the mind-to-mind council of war.

_She can't predict reactions to her own actions! When you moved those homing arro-_

-ws so they wouldn't hit Nodoka, Anya couldn't see where I'd move them. She couldn't see how we'd dodge her own attacks, either. Of course. Before the telepath could finish her explanation, though, Torako had broken the connection and gone around the side of the block.

"Wait! Wait!" she called. "I give up. You're too powerful. I know the winning side when I see it." Her blades clattered to the floor. Peeking around the side, I could see her walking slowly toward a smirking Anya, hands held behind her head. Anya was cooing about the rewards of prudence and loyalty as the catgirl came closer, now within arms' reach. I almost missed the blur of Torako swinging her fist toward the witch, but I couldn't miss the flame she answered with, or the explosion that slammed both of them to the ground.

Nodoka and I rushed to the sides of the two fallen girls. Neither showed any inclination to get up at the moment. Anya was a traditional mage, without a mage knight's ability to take a pounding, and Torako, Torako had been weakened until the Powers That Be decided she couldn't be a threat, oh why had I let her come in the first place? It was clear that the damage to the catgirl would need a far better healer than me. All I could do was grip her hand, the unburnt one with the full complement of fingers.

"You were right," she grinned. "Those flares you gave me do pack a wallop."

"If you'd waited just ten seconds, we could have come up with a plan that didn't involve you punching a fire mage with an improvised bomb. Or breaking a surrender, like some kind of terrorist."

"Hey, she started it when she invited us into a trap! And I can't trust you pampered schoolgirls to come up with a decent battle plan."

"Right," said Nodoka, who'd just finished tying up an underage girl. "Looks like we'll have to get Konoka to heal you both, and then I should be able to dig the crazy out of Anya's brain, no problem."

"Run program: Maenad," said Anya in an affectless voice. Then she screamed and thrashed, as sigils I couldn't identify (not a common occurrence) appeared on her skin. The screaming only lasted a moment before shifting into something more guttural, and the thrashing ripped through the rope binding her. Before any of us could react, the no-longer-frail girl had swung her left hand into Nodoka and her right into me, sending us flying with rib-breaking force.

Problem.

The cracking of my ribs aside, being flung across a warehouse filled with unyielding monoliths was but a minor inconvenience, given that I held on to my staff and its cushioning safe-flying spells. I'm not entirely sure how Nodoka managed to avoid performing an impression of a squirrel meeting a windshield, but I understand it wasn't her first experience with suddenly falling sideways.

Actually, this was one of the rare cases where not being punched across the room was the path of greatest danger. After all, the unpunched Torako was the only one in the room still in range of the fists Anya was ready to bring down on the catgirl's defenseless, injured body.

One of the side effects of the safety mechanisms on flying staffs prevents the reckless user from going "too fast," i.e. fast enough to traverse the length the warehouse before Anya landed an unfairly hammerlike blow on my downed comrade. Overriding that little feature is quite illegal, and in some locales officially considered impossible. Now I figure those laws were put in place to protect the terminally impetuous, so rescuing Torako perfectly adhered to the spirit of the rules.

My unlawful velocity left me with a bloody nose, a pair of blackening eyes, and a bone-deep satisfaction when I shoulder-checked Anya. Her flesh felt as adamant as the rocks behind me, but I did knock her a step back. That reminded me that even mages and ninjas and every other damn thing can only cheat Newton so much. Anya might be stronger than she had any right to be, but she shouldn't be any heavier. In the spirit of scientific enquiry, I resolved to test this hypothesis by sending her upwards via an Axe of Lightning. If I'd been thinking just a little faster, I would have held back my power just enough to avoid launching her all the way to the ceiling, where she would have a platform to leap off of back down to me. As it happened, I came to that particular realization just in time to dodge her downwards charge. Well, mostly. Instead of crushing my skull and torso, and all my very favorite organs held within, she merely landed on and broke my staff arm in two places.

As I rather loudly and incoherently expressed my dissatisfaction with the resulting sensations, and Anya turned to no doubt offer me sweet release from mortal pains, my hand closed on the fortune-teller's discarded wand. I whipped it up to send an arrow of wind right down the maniac's throat. Students of wind magic learn early on, and usually forget as useless trivia, that it is a fairly simple matter to alter the gas composition of summoned air. For instance, one may cast wind spells using air completely devoid of oxygen, but one usually has rather more effective options available than blocking off ones opponent's breathing with such a spell.

My little trick bought me a few moments as Anya clawed at her own throat, but she then noticed the wand's proximity to her teeth and decided the most effective solution was to bite the offending focus in half, along with several of my fingers. I was saved the trouble of figuring out what in the name of every deity ever conceived of my plan I-don't-even-know-what-letter would be by the extraordinarily timely arrival of dear, sweet, precious Nodoka and her knack with mind magic. All it took was a moment or two of her hands on either side of Anya's head and the redhead was dead to the world. I'd have gladly imitated her if my nervous system weren't so intent on informing me that yes, I was still badly injured. Gee, thanks. I had no idea.

I felt Torako's undamaged hand grip mine, and looked over to see her smiling at me. Well. Perhaps there were worse ways to spend the time, at that.

I spend entirely too much time in hospital beds, considering all the skillful magical healers I surround myself with. And yet when I tried to make the most of it and enjoy a decent sleep for once, Miss Konoe I'm-so-sweet-and-innocent-tee-hee Konoka felt the most logical course of action was to start tickling my feet.

"I see your reflexes are doing fine," chirped the she-devil herself over my flurry of sleep-slurred, bilingual invective. "How are your fingers feeling?"

I cycled through all the impolite gestures I knew how to do with one hand. "About normal for being freshly regenerated."

"This happen to you a lot?" asked Torako from the next bed, doing her less obscene finger exercises.

"Not since the Ariadne final exams, but they're some vivid memories. Konoka, I'm assuming that since you woke us up you've got some news to share?"

"Of course," the healer replied. "Now this Aegis Kai Doru, ah, do either of you know very much about finance?" I know that money is nice and mostly happens to other people. Judging from Torako's expression when we shared a glance, either she knew about as much or some wicked painkillers had just kicked in. "I'll take that as a no. The short version is, a lot of the resources it's drawing on come from Mars, which isn't supposed to have anyone on it, so it isn't coming legally. Once our people bring the company to the powers that be, they should dismantle it in short order, and they won't really care if some random warehouse got broken into. So congratulations.

"Anya's case is more of a good news, bad news, thing. The good news is that she's alive and sane and talking and should make a full recovery. The bad news is that the full recovery is going to take a while. That maenad thing…."

"If she's talking, I've got some questions for her," I said, moving to get out of bed.

"Oh, she's sleeping right now." Oh really? You let people sleep now? What a fascinating idea. "She did say that these Ares people are after a Mars for Martians, meaning people whose ancestors were created by the Lifemaker. Not exactly fond of Arika marrying someone from Earth."

"Wonderful," said Torako, suddenly sounding bitter as wormwood and older than she had any right to be. "Another reason for people to hate and kill each other. I mean, we were running out. Pretty soon we were going to have to start a war over whether vanilla or chocolate ice cream is better."

It struck me that we'd never exactly spoken about her past. I leaned over the divide between the beds to put a hand on her shoulder. "If they're bigots, that means that they've got a blind spot for us to exploit. Not that we really need the help. We'll rescue the people they've taken, protect the people they target, and heal the people they've hurt. That's what Ala Alba does, and you're just a pin short of membership by this point anyway." I turned to get confirmation from Konoka, but she seemed to have slipped out, leaving the two of us alone. That was a little odd.

"And here I was expecting you to tell me that getting blown up proves I'm out of my depth here and should leave the heroing to the schoolgirls."

"Ha ha, no. Negi used to try that all the time when we actually were schoolgirls and nobody ever even considered listening. That reminds me, if we're going to be working together, and I'd like to, you having the artifact from a pactio would come in hand-"

And then Torako was kissing me, and my train of thought was quite thoroughly drowned out by an angelic chorus. The beatific, androgynous kind of angels, not the burning wheels covered in eyes. I did manage to remember my own name, though. After a disappointingly short time, she drew back and raised an expectant eyebrow.

"See, you actually have to do it in a magic circle or it doesn't work," I said, bland as dry toast.

She gave a haughty sniff. "Well, yeah. I just had to be sure the artifact would be worth it."

"Picky, picky. In my day, you made the contract first chance you got, if you had to make out with a ten-year-old to do it. I guess schoolgirls are more pragmatic than terrorists." That got me bopped with a pillow.

"Go back to sleep. I demand more beauty sleep from you if we're going to do this for real. A gal's gotta have standards." How could I refuse such a sweetly-worded request?

* * *

**A/N: Well, that took a while even by my standards. Sorry about that. And since I'm absolutely terrible about responding to reviews, let me just extend my warm thanks to those of you who took the trouble.**


End file.
